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Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"

I just read the
Penny Arcade for the 3rd, and I found that the boys took on more than
Linux (Red Hat rules), they took on User Friendly itself! If you don't
belive me check this out: http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99feb/19990215.html

That will explain
the "I got your Windows refunds..."

-David "007david"
Lee

Yup...I
noticed that. Thanks for the direct link, David!

Subject: Whats up
with Penny Arcade?

What in the hell was that?
That was a poor excuse for the cartoon we ahve come to expect!

I am a huge fan of the cartoon,
not because its all that humourous, but because of the style.

So why a lame ass cartoon
this week? Games aren't the only things that need style ya know.

David

That WAS the style! Just
reversed...that strip was drawn by Tycho, who usually writes. Very cool,
I think...another look at the same talent.

Hrm.

Subject: dreamcast/psx2

while i found your
bit about dreamcast/psx2 future very interesting, there was one part
i thought i should correct you on. i just purchased a dreamcast recently
via the internet and it was shipped without a modem. that is correct.
instead of the modem, in it's place was a white plastic connector which
i quickly opened to discover that it was nothing at all. it is just
there to protect the contactors. sega is shipping dreamcasts without
modems, more than likely to reduce the price of the system for people
who do not want one. i opted to not get one because i want a 56.6 that
would be released here in the states. whether or not sega ships dreamcasts
with the option of a modem here in the states, i do not know. btw, i
purchased my dreamcast system for $300 at www.buyrite1.com. with a modem,
it is $350. the games sell for no more than 53.50! very reasonable and
all items are new. they even have a puru puru(vibration pack)

I didn’t
think Sega was shipping the Dreamcast without modems....anyone know
if this is a thing being done by a distributor, or an official Sega
thing?

How true it is...

Subject: Beaker's
Bent on Game Ads

Oh my YES. This
was a truly great article. Now if only the advertisers would read it...
One thing Rich didn't explore nearly enough was what he vaguely touched
on with "There have been some ads I have seen which are so hideously
repellent that I have been unable to even leave the magazine flipped
open to their page"... He forgot to discuss 'gross-out' ads. You know,
like the one where somebody has a fork jammed in their eye, or where
their eyes are peeling out of their face (because wow, this game's graphics
look THAT good), and so on. These kinds of ads are getting more common
and more horrific, and I really can't even bear to look at them. I generally
don't know what they're advertising, because I can't leave my eyes on
the page that long. Of course I thankfully no longer subscribe to Next-Gen,
although that has more to do with "Surprisingly, this game is kind of
decent even though it's not 3D" than disgusting advertising. But it
is nice to be free from grotesquerie in advertising. Now all I need
to do is get Fox to stop advertising the Guiness World Records show
without putting up a warning first.

Mike HommelHamumu Softwarewww.hamumu.com

And the
winner of this week’s t-shirt, because, well, damn, I love learning
things from the mailbag. :)

Subject:
Pal / NTSC Article

Nick,

Nice article, It's
good that someone has brought this problem up.

But things are not
necessarily as bad as they seem. It is a misconception that PAL machines
are slower than their NTSC counterparts. Sure, the frame rate is less,
but the internal working of the machine run at exactly the same speed.
There is consequently more CPU power available per-frame on a PAL machine.

On the theoretical
example of a 1MHz machine. The number of CPU cycles per frame available
would be

NTSC 1,000,000 /
60 = 16,666.66 cycles per frame

PAL 1,000,000 /
50 = 20,000 cycles per frame - ADVANTAGE

PAL

If you break that
down to PER line basis

NTSC 16,666.66 /
525 = 31.74 cycles per line

PAL 20,000 / 625
= 32 cycles per line - PHOTO

FINISH!

This means 2 things:

1) A letter-boxed
PAL port has MORE power available PER FRAME and should not suffer from
more slowdown, apart from the initial drop to 50hz. Graphics could even
be improved! (Less pop-up etc.)

i.e. A game which
occasionally shows down ("chugs") in it's NTSC version, will probably
run smoother in PAL.

2) Much more importantly,
the processing power IS available to draw those extra lines, without
any making higher demands on the machine.

Virtually perfect
PAL versions are definately possible, if game logic were divorced from
frame rate - This is emminently possible in 3D games, though would not
work so well in old style 2D games.

PC programmers have
been dealing with EXTREMELY variable frame rates, very successfully,
for years. Doom & Quake (and even our own game Wetrix) automatically
compensate on the fly for varying frame rates. By comparison, dealing
properly with two different *fixed* rates should be a fairly trivial
task for console programmers.

The real problem
is lack of effort by US and Japanese developers who don't take PAL very
seriously. Rare (who are, as you know, based in England) - simply make
the extra effort.

If more people shout
about this problem - it will eventually be a thing of the past.

Incidently, I have
known several developers who charge publisher thousands of dollars to
port a game to PAL, and do nothing more than change a few copyright
messages!

John PickfordCreative DirectorZed Two Limitedemail: [email protected]Wetrix "Buy
two copies"www.zedtwo.com

-
Stephanie "Bobbi" Bergman is an associate editor at loonygames.
She's probably the most normal person on the staff. That's really
sad.